Houselessness
Houselessness is the term for when someone living in Duilintinn is not pledged to a Noble House. The concept of being house-less is actually super interesting. After all, no one had a house in the first ten years of the kingdom, and I’ve already mentioned how people would continue to live and work in areas that weren’t under the rule of a noble lord prior to the founding of House Brody and House Jameson. Intentional Houselessness See Also: Houseless Gap-Years There are people in the kingdom to this day who choose not to have a house for various political or academic reasons, either temporarily or perminantly. While this wouldn’t make you a lesser citizen and people would respect your choice, it would make it tricky to do administrative things, such as paying taxes and applying for The Watch (for the same reasons why someone who has pledged to two houses would have to pick one as a formality when becoming a Watcher). Administrative Problems All records of individual citizens are collected and kept by their house. If someone doesn’t have a house, they are effectively invisible in the eyes of the government. It’s nearly impossible for a government to help a group of people that they don’t have any official records of. For example, if you don’t have a house, no one would know if you weren’t attending school. Houseless people can live anywhere within Duilintinn, but have formed a quasi-district of their own on the outskirts of the capital city of Cordoire. Since the capital is one of the only areas in the kingdom not affiliated with a specific house, many houseless people would probably live in or around the capital city. The king and his court are aware of these slums, and numerous programs have been proposed to aid these refugees and houseless people to find new homes. However, any action they take is immediately hindered by the house-based system of records within the kingdom. It's hard to help people when they're virtually invisible in the eyes of the government. Therefore, the first step towards helping the people clustered in these slums would be to find them a house, but many of the refugees clustered around the edge of the city have no desire to leave. For some, this is good enough in comparison to what they faced in their old situation. For others, they’ve never known anything else and can’t face that change. For still others, a feeling of bitterness or cynicism towards the Noble House system and the ways it might have failed or abandoned them keeps them stubbornly insisting on remaining houseless. It’s a tough problem to solve, and until a solution is found, the slums and shantytowns surrounding the outer border of the capital city will remain as a sobering reminder that, no matter how legendary you are, you can’t save everyone. Houseless Children Crisis Orphans who don’t know their parental house are probably house-less until they are mature enough to decide what house to join. However, that assumes they will ever go through the necessary steps to chose a house after spending years basically abandoned by the system. This whole house-based education system is another huge reason why houseless children are such an at-risk demographic. Kids who don’t have a house will not be able to get an education, not through intentional exclusion, but systematic ignorance of these children’s existence. As stated in the post about being houseless, efforts are being made to deal with this dramatic flaw in the system. However, the increased numbers of orphans and refugees left in the wake of The Enemy seems to be making the problem worse, rather than better. Until it is resolved, the crisis surrounding houseless orphans and refugee children might be one of the biggest social issues to be found across the entire kingdom. Currently, efforts are being made to adapt the Houseless "gap year" program to aid children who are houseless due to being orphaned or refugees. While some houseless children will be lucky enough to stumble upon a caring family until they are old enough to choose a house for themselves, many go unnoticed under the house-based bureaucratic system of the kingdom. If a house and its authorities do not have you in their records, you are not that house’s responsibility to protect and provide for. Therefore, to be houseless is to effectively be invisible and leaves orphans and refugee children to fend for themselves. As stated above, the simplest and most active solution at the moment is for The Watch to take in these children, since it doesn’t require them to chose a house at such a young age. However, better solutions are being worked on, albeit slowly in the wake of the enemy threat. Adoption Thankfully, Adoption is a fairly simple process within Duilintinn due to the house switching system already in place. Duilintinn's people take a census regularly to allow the administrators of each House to figure out what resources they’ll need to care for their people. Since not everyone can read or write, people are expected to travel to certain locations (kinda like polling booths) to fill out the census with a literate official. This is also when you would officially switch houses on paper, if you were in the mood for that. These censuses determine which House keeps records of you and your family. Therefore, it would probably be super easy just to register an adoption during these censuses as well. Just fill out their records for the first time or have their old papers put under your family name, and then boom! You’re done! However, if the child did have existing papers registered under a different family name, the other family members would have to be deceased or present at this census location to approve the switch.